Newbie with question

Hi,

I stumbled on MDA about 2 weeks ago and immediately went out & bought the book which I devoured in a few days. Admittedly, I came for possible weight loss but after reading PB I realized that this lifestyle could offer me so much more. So, I'm on board.

I cut out all my whole grains (which is difficult cause I've never been a big meat lover) but I felt like I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I just got the Primal Leap Guidebook to help me along and when I did all the calculations for Carbs, protein, fat, the calorie level put me @ around 1100 per day. So what I want to know is: IS THAT RIGHT?

I know when I've cut my calories below 1400 in the past I was constantly hungry. I hate being hungry. Today is my first day adhering to my eating guidelines religiously and I'm freaking out a bit.

I stumbled on MDA about 2 weeks ago and immediately went out & bought the book which I devoured in a few days. Admittedly, I came for possible weight loss but after reading PB I realized that this lifestyle could offer me so much more. So, I'm on board.

I cut out all my whole grains (which is difficult cause I've never been a big meat lover) but I felt like I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I just got the Primal Leap Guidebook to help me along and when I did all the calculations for Carbs, protein, fat, the calorie level put me @ around 1100 per day. So what I want to know is: IS THAT RIGHT?

I know when I've cut my calories below 1400 in the past I was constantly hungry. I hate being hungry. Today is my first day adhering to my eating guidelines religiously and I'm freaking out a bit.

Any advice would be great.

Whole grains block absorption of nutrients. When you eat primally, your body can actually use more of what you take in. My calorie intake has decreased yet I don't get hungry nearly as quickly. There is nothing like a high grain diet to make you hungry every two hours or less.

See how you do. If you are hungry, add more fats. You don't have to eat a lot of meat. In fact, you can do vegetarian primal. (Not recommending that you do so. Just saying.) Do you like fish or shellfish? Do you like eggs? Just make sure you do get enough protein.

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Primal Blueprint Explorer My blog for people who are not into the Grok thing. Since starting the blog, I have moved close to being Archevore instead of Primal. But Mark's Daily Apple is still the best source of information about living an ancestral lifestyle.

I know when I've cut my calories below 1400 in the past I was constantly hungry. I hate being hungry. Today is my first day adhering to my eating guidelines religiously and I'm freaking out a bit.

You're going to react very differently to 1400 calories of grains than you will 1100 calories of fat and protein. But I would say don't even try to track calories, because when you cut the sugar and grains and just eat clean vegetables, proteins, and fats, your calories are most likely going to go down naturally based on satiety, and # of calories don't matter nearly as much as your hormonal response to them, which you'll be fixing by eating this way. You can track for curiosity sake, but not to try to stay within a certain number. There's no reason to be uncomfortably hungry....don't do that to yourself! Eat good food until you're no longer hungry, then eat again when you are. Don't make it more complicated than that, at least not at first...later on you can play around with some of the different things people do with restrictions and refeeds, but there's no need for it now. Relax and enjoy feeding yourself naturally.

Thank you everyone. I AM learning to like meat and I DO eat it. It's just in the past, it's always made me a little queasy (not sure why, maybe it's the fat. I HATE fat or foods with that kind of texture). I love steak and any firm meat or fish, eggs make me a little queasy unless they're hard boiled. I will take your advice and see what happens.